Increased psychosocial strain in Lithuanian versus Swedish men: the LiVicordia study.

OBJECTIVE: Coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality is four times higher in 50-year-old Lithuanian men than in 50-year-old Swedish men. The difference cannot be explained by standard risk factors. The objective of this study was to examine differences in psychosocial risk factors for CHD in the two countries. METHODS: The LiVicordia study is a cross-sectional survey comparing 150 randomly selected 50-year-old men in each of the two cities: Vilnius, Lithuania, and Linköping, Sweden. As part of the study, a broad range of psychosocial characteristics, known to predict CHD, were investigated. RESULTS: In the men from Vilnius compared with those from Linköping, we found a cluster of psychosocial risk factors for CHD; higher job strain (p <.01), lower social support at work, lower emotional support, and lower social integration (p values <.001). Vilnius men also showed lower coping, self-esteem, and sense of coherence (p values < .001), higher vital exhaustion, and depression (p values < .001). Quality of life and perceived health were lower and expectations of ill health within 5 to 10 years were higher in Vilnius men (p values < .001). Correlations between measurements on traditional and psychosocial risk factors were few and weak. CONCLUSIONS: The Vilnius men, representing the population with a four-fold higher CHD mortality, had unfavorable characteristics on a cluster of psychosocial risk factors for CHD in comparison with the Linköping men. We suggest that this finding may provide a basis for possible new explanations of the differences in CHD mortality between Lithuania and Sweden.

Blood lymphocyte ultrastructure and deoxyribonucleic acid content in children with systemic lupus erythematosis.

Two varieties of peripheral blood lymphocytes have been disclosed in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) cases: one showing signs of degradation and nuclear chromatine elimination and the other one manifesting a state of biological activation, possibly of an immunologic nature. This karyostructural lymphocyte heterogeneity in SLE may cause a great scattering of these cells on histograms in respect to their nuclear deoxyribonucleic acid content determined by cytophotometry. On the other hand, the expressiveness of the scattering and the degree of predominance of negative tendency towards proliferation (with a shift to the left from 2 n) may thereby serve as a very objective quantitative indication of nuclear structure degradation and of loss by lymphocytes of chromatine with deoxyribonucleic acid during SLE.

Morphologic study of the action of lymphoid tissue extracts in peroxidase arthritis.

By means of modelling arthritis by horseradish peroxidase it was possible to reproduce a process corresponding to immune synovitis. A considerable reduction of immunomorphological phenomena in joints, lymphoid tissue, heart, liver and kidneys was favoured by application of lymphoid tissue extracts. Comparison between the extracts of spleen and lymph nodes showed a more pronounced effect of spleen extract.

[Study of the total nucleic acid content of lymphoid tissue plasma cells for assessing the immunodepressive action of various antirheumatic agents]. / Izuchenie summarnogo soderzhaniia nukleinovykh kislot plazmaticheskikh kletok limfoidnoi tkani dlia otsenki immunodepressivnogo deistviia razlichnykh protivorevmaticheskikh sredstv.

The influence of antirheumatic drugs, acetylsalicylic acid, diacetoxibenzoic acid, imurane and D-penicillamine, on the status of immunocompetent cells in experimental infectious-allergic carditis was studied morphologically in 70 rabbits. The immunosuppressive effect of all 4 drugs was established which was manifested by a decrease in the number of plasma cells in the lymphoid tissue and a decrease in the content of nucleic acids in their cytoplasm. D-penicillamine was the exception as after its use the content of nucleic acids in the cell cytoplasm was found to be increased which was considered to be due to clasmatosis of plasma cells, marginal karyolysis, damage of the nuclear membrane and release of nucleic acids from the nucleus into the cytoplasm. Acetylsalicylic acid and diacetooxybenzoic acid decrease RNA content in the cytoplasm of plasma cells less than imurane and do not cause cell degeneration with contamination of the extracellular environment with products of cells degeneration.